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THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
THE
FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
BY
STANDISH O’GRADY
AUTHOR OF “‘ULRICK THE READY” AND ‘‘THE BOG OF STARS,”’
EDITOR OF ‘‘PACATA HIBERNIA ”
LONDON
LAWRENCE AND BULLEN, Lr.
16, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1897
[All vights reserved]
ne Ricwarp Cray & Sons, Limiter,
- Lonpon & Bunaay. e
PREFACE
Tuts tale, in spite of its title, is not a romance, but an
actual historic episode, told with hardly a freer use of the
historical imagination than is employed by the more popu-
lar and picturesque of our professed historians. There is,
however, this difference between my method and theirs, viz.
that while they write directly, I aim at a similar result
indirectly through a certain dramatization. The same
method has been adopted, I think very effectively, by Carlyle,
at times, in his history of Frederick the Great.
There is probably an Art as well as a Science of
history. If that be so, the present work may be regarded
as an experiment in that kind of composition, a kind which
demands the employment of more than one or two mental
faculties on the part both of the reader and of the writer,
The authorities for the story are the ‘‘ Annals of the Four
_ Masters” ; Philip O’Sullivan’s charmingly Herodotean nar-
rative, in Latin, entitled Historia Hibernice ; O’Clery’s
‘“‘Bardic Life of Hugh Roe” ; and the “Calendar of State
Papers, Ireland,” from 1587 forward. The colouring, the
visualization and dramatization, are, however, derived from a
wider circle of contemporary literature. I may add thatthe
book contains almost nothing for which there is not direct or
indirect historical justification.
STANDISH O’GRADY.
VT:
VIII.
XII.
oa F
XIV.
XV.
ae Vile
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX,
XXI.
XXII,
XXIII.
CONTENTS
SIR JOHN PERROTT ... ae
THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS .., Lae
THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER
WINES WHITE AND RED oe ee: es
RED HUGH AND HIS TUTOR RIDE A-COSHERING
TRAPPED ake ihe Be ty
NO SUBSTITUTE FOR RED HUGH ...
THE SHIPLESS CHIEFTAIN ... as
UNCLE SORLEY'S HIGH PERCH Sats ae)
HUGH ROE NOT TO BE RELEASED ... ae
FITZWILLIAM VISITS THE DARK-DAUGHTER ...
WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER Ap
PERROTT THE OVERBOLD ... en ane
EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE...
O’ROUANE,. THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD
DE PUES pysre cre, ae igh
DESCENT FROM THE TURRETS
ART KAVANAGH GUARDS THEIR FLIGHT
FEAGH MACHUGH ... ea
PURSUERS AND PURSUED
A WET BIVOUAG
SIR FELIM COMES INTO THE SAGA
SIR FELIM STRUCK AGHAST res
FINDS RELIEF IN A WOMAN’S READY WIT
102
109
120
124
128
131
133
136
141
145
Vill
CHAP.
XXIV.
XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
XXVIII.
XXIX.
KR.
XEXL
XXXII.
XXXIII.
XXXIV.
XXXY.
XXXVI.
XXXVII.
XXXXVIUI.
XXXIX,
XL,
RA
XLII.
XLII.
XLIV.
XLY.
XLVI.
CONTENTS
TWO STRONGHOLDS iets soe toe
THE LADY ROSE WATCHING AND LISTENING...
RACING AT MIDNIGHT
BACK TO THE CASTLE a6 ie
AN EARL’S LOVE AFFAIR
‘SPILE AWAY, LAD”
GOOD-BYE TO THE CASTLE...
AN UNEXPECTED IMPEDIMENT
ALONE ON THE WHITE HILLS us,
A LEAFY BREAKFAST...
IN GLENMALURE his oo
A VOICE FROM THE TOMB ....
NEWS! NEWS! ee aay, Sate
YELLOW-HAIRED TURLOUGH VISITS FEAGH
A STORM OF HOOFS ... a Ave
RED HUGH GOES OUT FROM GLENMALURE
WALLS AND TOWERS ...
A CHIEFTAIN TO THE HIGHLANDS BOUND
AN EXCELLENT ENGLISH GENTLEMAN
STARTING FROM MELLIFONT
THE SENTINEL CITY ... yu ee
THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN GATES OF ULSTER
HOME!
POSTSCRIPT... Oe ade ae
APPENDIX Ue oh
PAGE
147.
153
156
166
172
179
184
188
190
194
197
201
203
207
213
218
228
231
235
243
247
252
263
272
273
THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
CHAPTER I
SIR JOHN PERROTT
THE age of oratory had not yet arrived, and the *
man was no orator, yet his speech was a great one
the like of which had never before been heard in
Ireland. It was proud, arrogant, and boastful, but it
was true. On this occasion Brag was a good dog, and
hard to beat. The orator had reached the culminating
point of a matchless career, and Nature and Man
seemed to have conspired to invest it with the utmost
possible splendour.
It was midsummer—the forenoon of one of those
gorgeous days which seem to be without beginning or
end—when sunset is not followed by night, but through
the brief twilight hours the world is ever cheered with
the bright presence of the journeying dawn. Sunshine
slept on the grey walls, the buttresses and pinnacles of
a great antique church quivered in the shaken silver of
poplars, and flashed again from the halbert points and
helmets of a ranked soldiery, steel-clad to the knee,
B
yy THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE ©
Many civilians were here too, in their plumed hats,
copious white collars, and flowing capes. All the pre-
cincts were alive with colour—the glitter of brass and
steel—the glare of cloth of gold—the glow of richly-
dyed mantles and short cloaks. Above the quiet dead
was poured to-day a most brilliant tide of life.
Yew-trees planted here by the generation which suc-
ceeded St. Patrick protested in vain with their monitions
of the tears of things, and the eternal tragic, against all
that glitter and bravery. To-day none regarded their
mementote mori; the tide of life was too full. 3
Beyond the church precincts a vast multitude
thronged all approaches save one, which armed men
kept free. Hager faces crowded in the windows of the
adjacent houses, which were of timber, tall and gabled,
with deep, shadow-casting eaves. Towards the east
rose the turrets of a great Norman keep.
The church was Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin,
built long since by Sitric the Dane, upon some ancient
Celtic foundation, and the time—the gilded iron age
of great Hliza, or to be more precise, the 10th day of
June, 1588, the year of the Armada.
Within, the great church was full of voices. Here
sounded the high, clear, level tones of crying heralds,
the manlier accents of speaking men, the murmur and
hum of a vast auditory. Here a great state function
was in progress, for a Government was going out and
a Government was coming in. It was a splendid and
solemn, almost religious ceremony, celebrated with
antique rites.
‘A screen of rich and richly-coloured drapery divided
the nave from the chancel. In the midst of the screen,
serene and pale, shone the countenance of the virgin
Queen. It was a full-length portrait, elaborately
SIR JOHN PERROTT 3)
painted down to the shining shoes of her imperial feet,
Repentant rebel lords have kissed those feet, and be-
moaned before them their transgressions and back-
slidings. The cult of that great lady was almost the
only religion owned by many here. |
Hard by in a clear space the chief actors of the
stately drama played their parts. The rest of the
buildmg was thronged with men who more or less
silently assisted. Few of them had ever witnessed any
ceremony resembling this,
At a certain point in the grandly unfolding solem-
nity, a man of huge stature, nearly seven feet high,
gorgeously attired, and of a port and presence which
caused him to seem even greater than he was, rose and
delivered proudly a most proud speech.
The gigantic orator was Sir John Perrott, outgoing
Viceroy; the person formally addressed—for his words
were intended for the ears of the empire—was Sir
William Fitzwilliam, the new Lord Deputy. By
direction of the Queen, Fitzwilliam was about to
undertake the government of the most turbulent
and unbridled aristocracy in Europe. They were
present during the Christ Church ceremony, having
come together for that purpose, as with one consent,
from the ends of the island. They were all clothed
in irreproachable English costume, and yet a nice ob-
server would have perceived that this costume had
been adopted for the nonce. There was, indeed,
nothing Irish to catch the eye; but when they mur-
mured together during the ceremony, a listener might
have detected the deeper accents of the Gael. One
of them, Turlough Lynagh, known in the North as
O'Neill, and Captain of Ulster, and at Court as Sir
Turlough, and Earl of Clan-Connell, bore the Sword
4 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
of State before Perrott. The new Viceroy having been
sworn, Perrott took the sword from O’Neill, and,
placing it in the hands of Fitzwilliam, delivered the
following speech :—
“Now, my Lord, since that by her Mayesty’s direction
I have given up the government of this kingdom «nto
your hands, I must give your lordship to understand (and
I thank God I may say so) that I leave wt wn perfect peace
and tranquillity, which [ hope your lordship will certify
unto her Majesty and the Lords of the Council. LI aust
add thus much—if there be any man in this kingdom sus- ;
pected to be evil-minded to the State, who 1s able to draw
but six swordsmen after him into the field, of he hath not
already put in pledges for his fidelity, so your lordship
shall think it necessary, I will undertake, though now a
private man, to send for him, and of he come not in within
twenty days I will forfert the credit and reputation of my
Government.”
It was a proud speech, and not less true than proud.
When Perrott, in his vauntings, turned round upon
that crowd of notables, he only saw nods of assent, or
heard men murmuring, “It is true, your Honour,” and
“Tq, se go deimin.” The chieftainry of all Ireland were
present on this occasion. Not only had they come
to Dublin to take their leave of Perrott and witness
his departure, but they had come six weeks before the
time, as an especial mark of honour and affection. A
journey to Dublin was a serious undertaking in those
days of bad roads or no roads. It was also a most
costly undertaking. No chief could show his face
abroad without the countenance and support of a great
feudal retinue. He could not move but like Vic-lan-
Wohr, with “his tail on,” the gentlemen of his house-
hold perfectly mounted and equipped, his saffron-vested
SIR JOHN PERROTT 5
body-guard of claymores and battle-axes, and the gillies
who waited on them, his bard, his harpers, his shana-
chies, and generally the utmost feudal splendour that
his state could afford, whose sustenance away from
home often left him poor for years. Nevertheless they
had come. They stood around him and behind him
in Christ Church as he made the ears of the new Lord
Deputy to tingle, and his enemies, for he had many,
to cower before him. And, observe, that this speech
was delivered on the eve of the sailing of the Spanish
‘Armada. Wherever else the Empire was assailable
it was invulnerable in Ireland. Ireland was never so
loyal, at any time in her history, as during the Vice-
royalty of Perrott.
Here were men whom he had conquered in war,
whom he had conciliated by courtesy, or inspired with
confidence by his just and honourable ways. The
greatest of them, who twice and thrice and many times
had drawn sword against the State, to-day in court
attire bore the Sword of State before Perrott. Had
the Queen permitted it he would have brought over “to
London at their own charges” all this flock of tamed
dynasts to swear allegiance to their Queen, and kiss her
wonderful feet.
The Viceroy, too, as their Sovereign’s deputy, was
entitled to honour, But every man of them believed
that, on cause shown, he had a right inherited from
afar, and exercised times without number, to draw
sword against both, and with steel and fire right all
wrongs, whether received from the State or from one
another. Some of the greatest clans, notably the
Southern Geraldines, had been conquered and exter-
minated; and yet the spirit of the men who to-day
surrounded Perrott was much the same as that which
6 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
animated Humphrey Bigod in his famous colloquy with
the Sovereign—
Sir Earl, you shall either go or hang.
Sir King, I will neither go nor hang.
Of these men who stood around Perrott in Christ
Church Cathedral, and who seemed so docile and tract-
~ able, there was hardly one who had not been in re-
bellion, hardly one who had not broken castles, and
wasted territories, and fired towns, warring against the
Queen, or who was not perfectly ready to do the same
again, on fit cause shown. Black Tom, the Butler
Karl of Ormond; and Captain of Tipperary, once wrote
to the Queen :—“I would I knew who advised your
Highness to this course, that I might put my sword
through him.” And even he, King Edward’s play-
fellow, let loose his clan in rebellion when the Viceroy
was not to his liking. Of O'Rourke, Brian of the
Ramparts, Lord of Leitrim, was it not written—“ He is
the proudest man who walks upon the earth to-day” ?
O’Flaherty, asked to show by what title he held Iar-
Connaught, answered straight, “By the sword, man;
what shall I say else?” Such were they all. Not
nobles of the modern type, but dynasts of the medizeval,
semi-independent, or altogether independent, touchy
and jealous, ever on the verge of rebellion.
Their egoism and pride were like Lucifer’s. Per-
rott. had tamed them as no Viceroy had ever tamed
them before. The Queen was their Sovereign, none
of them denied that; and they gazed with a mixture
of superstitious and chivalrous awe upon her picture,
which Sir Henry Sidney had brought into Ireland, and
which to-day filled the centre of the elaborate tapestry
which draped the east end of the Cathedral.
SIR JOHN PERROTT i
Perrott knew how to gain men’s hearts, but knew,
too, how to make the law a terror to evil-doers.
Sorley Boy, the MacDonald of Antrim and the Isles,
rebelled against him. Perrott gathered to his side all
the chiefs of Meath, Leinster, and Munster and invaded
him. He took all his castles, wasted his territories,
slew 1,200 of his people, and so tamed Sorley that he
came humbly to Dublin and made a prostrate sub-
mission. Sorley surrendered all his lands, gave his
sons—one of them the first Earl of Antrim—to Perrott
as hostages, swore allegiance in all the Queen’s courts,
flung down his sword, and on his knees lamented his
transgressions before the Queen’s picture, and kissed
the “pantofle” (slipper) of the same, the stern Viceroy
standing above him. Such was Perrott. The chief-
tains loved him, but they also feared. In him they
met their master, and joyfully recognized the fact.
In the pride and “towering temper” of the great
Viceroy they saw a certain sublime reflection of them-
selves. Perrott burned and slew, with a wrath as
destructive as their own, but yet with a placability
which was not theirs, and hoisted great chiefs to the
tops of church spires, and went trampling and hectoring
about the island ina manner which amazed the best
of them. Eventually they grew to be proud of such
a master, son of King Harry, too, a great point in
Perrott’s favour, and in the end fell passionately in
love with him. It was a strange flock, but the flock
suited the shepherd, and the shepherd the flock. Grex
and Pro-rex liked each other well. Wentworth after-
wards ruled Ireland with a quasi-regal sway. Men
feared Wentworth, but Perrott they feared and loved.
Of Perrott’s Irish career, the Christ Church scene was
the dramatic and perfectly-appropriate conclusion, and
8 - THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
Perrott’s high-vaunting words were true. From the
centre to the sea all Ireland was Perrott-land.
Perrott’s strong words and resonant accents rang
through the building, re-echoed with “True, your
honour” and “ Za se go deimin” by his flock of tamed
nobles, who gazed upon their idol with looks of fear,
admiration, and love—of sorrow, too, for he was being
borne away from them, and sinister rumours were abroad
as to the probable nature of his reception in England.
Perrott having ceased speaking the new Viceroy
mildly responded. He was an old man and an invalid.
He was sick on his way from London, and sick after his
arrival in St. Sepulchre’s, the Archbishop’s palace,
whence he wrote to Burleigh complaining of his health
and complaining of Perrott.
Fitzwilliam had a great experience in Irish affairs,
and was in this respect a contrast to Perrott, who had
scarcely any. He had served under Sussex, and
Sidney, and Lord Grey de Wilton, and had been him-
self in the government of the realm. So Fitzwilliam
was a man of experience. He was also what we now
term. a safe man. But his royal mistress had yet to
learn that safe men are sometimes dangerous, and that
great experience will not always make great rulers.
He now, with a face and voice anything but suggest-
ive of the man-ruler, replied that “all was well, and
that he wished he might leave the kingdom no worse
than his lordship had done.” “ After this they parted,”
continues the chronicler, “and the new Lord Deputy
went to his house, but most of the nobility and gentry
stayed to attend upon Sir John Perrott, who that day
was invited to dine with the Mayor of Dublin. When
he returned to his lodging they all went to take their
leave of him. As he came from his lodging to the
SIR JOHN PERROTT 9
quay of Dublin to take boat, the throng of people
coming to salute him, some with cries of applause and
some with tears bemoaning his departure, was so great
that he was almost two hours before he could pass the
streets, and was forced twice or thrice to take house to
avoid the press.”
Turlough Lynagh, writes an eye-witness, accompanied
him to the boat, and, standing on the river's side while
he saw the ship under sail, with many tears lamented
his departure. And the City of Dublin, as a testimony
of their love and affection for him, sent some of their
young men with shot, who waited on him as his guard
till he arrived at his seat, called Carew Castle, in
Pembrokeshire.
Fifteen years before, his departure from Munster,
of which he had been President, is thus chronicled by
the “ Four Masters ” :—
“1573—The President of the two Provinces of
Munster went to England in the beginning of the
ensuing harvest, after having pacified and subdued the
country, leaving officers, councillors, and captains of his
own to rule and preside over it, in accordance with his
own wishes. The departure of the President was
lamented by the poor, the widows, and the weak and
helpless of the land.”
And now the second departure of Perrott from
Treland drew forth upon an infinitely greater scale
(including all classes) the love and regret of the Irish
nation, Slowly, with difficulty, and many delays, the
horsemen of the guard cleared a way through the
thronging multitude, as the great Englishman and the
attendant nobles and the “young men with shot”
moved down to the quay. It seemed as if destiny in
sport had given distracted Ireland at last a ruler
10 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
who could rule, full master of men’s: hearts as well
as of their persons, only to mock her with his speedy
withdrawal. |
As the ship which bore Perrott dropped down the
Liffey, Turlough Lynagh, the O’Neill, stood weeping
on the river side. Weeping, says the chronicler, but
recalling the Homeric simplicity of the age, its unre-
strained passion, and its naturalness, as well as certain
characteristics of the modern peasantry, whose manners
were formed by the chiefs, certain we may be that the
O’Neill and Perrott’s other Irish friends cried out,
lifting up their voices, and that their lamentation was
loud as well as deep. Nor did lamentation suffice old
Turlough Lynagh. As the boat which bore Perrott
put away from the wharf, the passionate old chieftain
rushed breast-deep into the Liffey to wring once more
in love the hand which had conquered him in war.
Nor did Perrott witness this scene dry-eyed, having
himself passions by no means under control. Indeed
he was not at all such a self-restraiing, divinely
tranquil man as Plato would have selected to be presi-
dent of his ideal republic. Once at the Council Board
in Dublin Castle he struck in the face Sir Nicholas
Bagenal, Marshal of Ireland, and gave him the lie
direct—a man nearly as passionate and headstrong as
himself. His own council he used to storm at as
“traitors, curs, and dung-hill beggars.” When Presi-
dent of Munster, he sent a challenge of single combat
to Sir James Fitzgerald, captain of the rebel Geman
He is the wild bastard of the Fairy Queen, Sir
Satyrane, the salvage youth who tamed tigers and
loved Una. In his “towering tempers” he did not
spare the Queen’s majesty, even to her face. Such a
man, so headstrong and passionate, surely felt to the
™
SIR JOHN PERROTT 11
quick the extraordinary emotion which his departure
called forth.
So down the Liffey, past Dunleary and the Hill of
Howth, Ireland’s one sovereign lord and master sailed
away to meet his doom—arraignment, false witness, a
mock trial, the Tower, and murder in the Tower. His
sails sank below the waves of the Irish Sea, and the
most singular of Viceroyalties burned down like a
blaze. The great bastard had gone out,.and the man
of much experience had come in, and Ireland, too, like
Perrott, went on to meet her doom.
Perrott’s weeping friends returned to their “ lodgings”
in those quaint Dublin streets, revolving many things,
of the past and of the future, of imperial, peerless
Perrott, whom all Ireland feared and loved, and of the
extraordinary being whom, with the Spaniard on the
sea, the Queen and Council had sent to be their ruler,
a gouty old gentleman and “of a moist habit,” known to
hate the flashing of stript steel, and to love craftiness
and double-dealing, a Lord Deputy who could not
even ride, “such were his impediments,’ and who was
extremely partial to—gifts. Perrott’s chieftains knew a
man when they saw him. Of Tudor state-craft they
were very ignorant.
CHAPTER II
THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS
THAT departure of Perrott was indeed very grand
and affecting, the surging crowds repelled by halberdiers
and horsemen, the brilliant procession to the wharf,
Perrott ridimg there in the midst of the earls and
barons, and, what was far more significant, of the
untitled chieftainry of the realm, the weeping on the
shore, and the Captain of Ulster, the O’Neill, dashing
out into the stream to take a last farewell of the
Deputy.
Yet, im human life as in nature, it is surfaces only
that glitter; tapestry the most gorgeous has its seamy
side. The Devil and his angels were as busy then as
they are now.
Of Perrott’s moral obliquities, of the seamy side of
his splendid Viceroyalty, we shall see something as the
tale runs on. Here just now it must double back and
linger a while in the midst of that triumphant and
gloriously unfolding drama of which Perrott was the
chief actor. Not a hundred yards from the wharf rose
Dublin Castle, a great rectangular construction rising
into towers. One of these was named after a Viceroy
of the Plantagenet period called De Birmingham. On
12
THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS 13
the battlements of Birmingham Tower stood three lads
watching the departure of Perrott, and as they watched
they cursed the out-goimg Viceroy. Near them stood
men in armour, with calivers on their shoulders and
faintly smoking matches, with swords and daggers at
their sides, and huge pistols stuck in their girdles.
The boys wore copious white frills and red capes, hats
of the broad-leaved Spanish type, and velvet jerkins.
For their dress, they might be sons of State officials,
who, by official favour, had secured this fine point of
vantage from which to observe all the moving pageantry
of the Viceroy’s out-going. Yet they were far, indeed,
from being such. Their speech, when they murmured
together, was pure Gaelic, and their hearts had nothing
in common with the life which went on around. The
State had set its mark on the exterior of these boys,
enclosing their small bodies with all the outward
signs and tokens of “loyalty and civility”; but their
minds were their own, and had no relation with the
new epoch. |
~ Of the three, one taller than the others stood in the
middle. His companions leaned towards him, talking
Gaelic in low voices. He stood straight as a rod. His
complexion was white and ruddy, brilliantly so; his
eyes grey and bright, with a most keen outlook, ex-
pressing a tameless energy. His long hair, a glowing
auburn, rolled upon his shoulders. He was sixteen
years of age, yet his countenance already bore signs of
a mind beyond his years. Such was his bearing, that
in any company a stranger would quickly observe him,
and inquire with interest concerning a youth so re-
markable for his beauty and proud air of self-possession
and self-control.
14 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
This boy was the famous Red Hugh O’Donnell. He
was here against his will, a hostage with the State for
the fidelity of his clan in the approaching Spanish
crisis; a clan which was one of the greatest of the
unsubdued nations of Ireland, the Clan Donnell of the
north-west. Of that nation his father was prince, and
he himself rigdamna, or princeps designatus. He was
a captive, and yet a potential political, and military force
in the island. A near ancestor of this boy had made
war against the State, with half of Ireland following
his banners. No soldier of the Crown had yet set
hostile foot within the borders of O’Donnell land.
Yet the lad is here in Dublin Castle, a hostage,
guarded by armed men, in a close imprisonment, which
for just one day has been relaxed by order of the
Deputy, partly as a compliment to his rank, chiefly in
order that the power, glory, and prosperity of the State
as to-day exhibited might make a salutary impression
on his young mind. From some of the staffs rising
from the tower gay bunting ripples and floats. Others
are surmounted by round black balls. They are the
tarred heads of men, great men who had rebelled
against the State, and ended so. For it was Hliza-
bethan Ireland, and the times, with all their splendour
and suggestions of chivalry, never failed to suggest
also an age of terror. Beneath the emblazoned banners
and the heads the three boys looked at Perrott. |
When the huge crowd on the wharfs began to
dwindle, a fussy, short-breathed old gentleman climbed
from the interior on to the parapets, and, with a rasp-
ing, ungracious voice, bad the soldiers take the boys
again to “the Grate.” The old gentleman was Mr.
Maplesdeane, new Oonstable of the Castle vice Mr.
THE BOYS ON THE BATTLEMENTS: 15
Seagrave, just retired. It was Mr. Maplesdeane’s
special function to watch over and safeguard the
hostages, of whom, besides this lad and his companions,
there were many in Dublin Castle. The watching
and safe-guarding of the hostages of Ireland was now
more than ever necessary, for the Spanish Armada
was about to sail, if indeed it was not already upon
the sea.
That slender boy, the leader of the three, turned
quickly at the sound of those brusque, abrupt tones,
and looked at the speaker. His eyelids just trembled
as he bent his bright, grey eyes on the speaker, other-
wise his face was impassive, and his aspect calm. He
bowed gravely as if in acknowledgment of a courtesy,
a little to the surprise of Mr. Maplesdeane, and
descended the stone stairs into the interior of the
tower, followed by his two companions.
How did the Government get this young Eagle of
the unsubdued North into their stone cage? Thereby
hangs a tale—a tale which, rightly told, will illustrate
for us a good deal of this strange and obscure time—
a famous tale, one of the most famous in our history,
intrinsically dramatic, and possessing incidentally a
large historical significance, for the boy with whom
it is concerned was reserved by Fate for a wonderful
career,
This red-haired stripling, whom to-night Mr. Maples-
deane drives into “the Grate” like a sheep, will be
known far and wide; he will waste many lands, win
many battles, storm castles innumerable, and even
walled cities. His name will one day strike fear into
the hearts of viceroys, here where he is now a mere
captive and prisoner, driven hither and thither by old
16 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
Mr, Maplesdeane. Ireland will yet quake to this boy’s
tread.
To understand how the Government secured this
paragon of hostages we must travel some twelve
months backwards, and into the heart of Perrott’s
viceroyalty.
CHAPTER III
THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER
In the spring of 1587 Perrott was exceedingly
active and anxious. The noise of the making of the
Armada was ever in his ears. He feared lest Ireland
should be its destination. The Catholic party in Eng-
land was strong; but Ireland was all Catholic—there
was hardly a Protestant in the whole island. Moreover,
a rhymed couplet was much in vogue at this time,
the burden of which was not reassuring to an Irish
viceroy—
“He who would England win
Must with Ireland begin.”
Treland was, indeed, loyal to the Queen, and animated
with a passionate feeling of strong personal regard for
Sir John Perrott. But Perrott had no army. In any
emergency he could only rely upon the feudal levy,
that is to say, upon the chieftainry themselves, and the
forces which by law they were bound to bring to his
aid. The fidelity of the chieftains was to him, therefore,
a vital necessity of the situation. All were, indeed,
obedient to the Queen and friendly tohimself, but he
could not count on the continuance of those feelings
should a powerful Spanish army land in the island.
Accordingly, he determined to make assurance doubly
17 C
18 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
sure, and bind the chieftains to the State by all means
in his power. Upon doubtful men within his reach he
laid sudden hands, and confined them in the Castle.
All the rest he bade send in hostages for their fidelity
during the Spanish crisis. All, or almost all, obeyed,
and the sons and foster-brothers of the chieftains
wended towards Dublin, or other strong places within
the realm. Perrotit’s call for hostages was felt to be
reasonable, and was promptly responded to. One
powerful family disobeyed, from whose disobedience
sprang the tragical and romantic tale with which we
have now to deal. Sir Hugh O'Donnell, who ruled
over the north-west of Ireland, the country which we |
now call the County of Donegal, but which was then
known as Tir-Connall, would send in no hostages.
Had he been his own master he would have done so;
but he was not. Once he was a great warrior, and a
staunch ally of the Queen during the Shane O'Neill
wars. He overthrew Shane in battle in 1567, after
which Shane the Proud tumbled headlong to ruin.
But Sir Hugh was now old and broken; his eyes, dim
with age, were turning, in true medizval fashion,
towards the cloister, whither, indeed, not long after
this he finally retired. But not old or broken was his
spouse. She was in the prime of life. The chieftainess,
not the chieftain, governed, these years, the north-west |
of Ireland, and Lady O’Donnell, for reasons of her own,
would not send, or suffer her lord to send, any of their
children as hostages to Perrott. She was not Irish
but Scotch, scion of one of the greatest Highland
families, the MacDonalds, Lords of the Isles. This
lady was the mother of Red Hugh, the slender, grey-
eyed, red-haired boy, whom we have just seen bowing
gravely, perhaps ironically, to fussy old Mr. Maples-
THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER 19
deane, on the battlements of Birmingham Tower in
Dublin Castle.
Her name is peculiar. She was the Ineen-Du
MacDonald, that is to say, Dark-Daughter Macdonald.
She possessed great estates, as well as great interest
and influence in the west of Scotland, and, though wife
of the O'Donnell, and residing with him at Donegal
House, kept in her pay and under her own command
an army of Scotch mercenaries, Nor was this remark-
able woman a termagant in the vulgar sense of the
word, for we are informed by the bardic historian, that
she “excelled in feminine accomplishments.” Her
mother, the Lady Agnes Campbell, is described by Sir
Henry Sidney, father of Sir Philip, as a wise and civil
woman, speaking French and Italian, and as well-
mannered as any lady he had ever met. Hence we
may fairly presume that the bardic historian has not
exaggerated in the high character which he gives to
her daughter. Circumstances, however, chiefly the
weakness and decrepitude of her lord, compelled her to
play a masculine part. The grand aim of her life was
to secure the reversion of the O’Donnell chieftainship
for her eldest son, an object not easily to be secured in
those days of elective chiefs and succession by tanistry,
which was but an Irish name for force. Pursuing this
end, she brought in and kept in her pay a reliable
Scotch army to hold in check and overawe the various
competitors for the O’Donnell-ship. In the end she
actually took the field at the head of her Scotch guards,
and fought and won battles; for though she “excelled
in feminine accomplishments,” yet, as we are informed
by the same authority, “she had the heart of a hero
and the soul of a champion, and was chief counsellor
and adviser of the men of Tir-Connall in her time.”
20 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
The Dark-Daughter was no favourite with the Govern-
ment. Her lightest movements were regularly entered
in the State Papers with suspicious comments. In
fact, she was a known and proved enemy to the State.
State policy had clipped away the hegemony exercised
by the O’Donnells of old time over Connaught. Lady
O’Donnell once made a desperate.effort to restore that
hegemony. On the night of the battle of Zutphen,
when Sir Philip Sydney lay dying, the President of
Connaught fought and beat a great army of Mac-
Donalds and Campbells who had invaded his presidency.
In the Scotch camp was discovered a letter from
Lady O'Donnell to the chiefs of the invading army.
_ “Be of good cheer, I have this day landed in the
Foyle with fifteen hundred men to support your inva-
sion. Through whatever country you pass cause
O’Donnell’s rent to be paid.”
Surely this was a stirring daughter of the Isles, and
not without reason was she jealously regarded by the
Government. In the State Papers she is sometimes
called “Lady O’Donnell,” more usually “the Scotch
woman,” or “the Scotch wife of Sir Hugh O’Donnell,”
and described a8 “a great bringer in of Scots “—“ Red
Shanks,” as they were termed in the official jargon of
the day. How to wring hostages from a lady of this
temper and this strength was a nice problem which
presented itself to Sir John Perrott in the year 1587,
when from all the Irish territories hostages were meekly
riding in to his strong places. ;
When, in that year, Perrott demanded her children
as hostages, the Dark-Daughter refused to send them,
doubled her army of Hebridean bowmen and gallow-
glasses, and defied the Viceroy. She had not “a
Spanish heart,’ or any leaning whatsoever to the
THE VICEROY AND THE DARK-DAUGHTER 21
Spaniard ; but she believed, and with good reason too,
that the Government, once in possession of her children,
would not restore them, save on conditions highly
against their and her interest.
Yet to Perrott, his ears filled with the noise of the
making of the Armada, Tir-Connall’s hostages were an
imperative necessity of the State. By force or fraud
he would have them; and in this mood wrote the
following letter to the Queen and the: Lords of the
Council—
“For O'Donnell, of tt would please her Majesty to
appoint me to go thither, I will make him and his
MacSweenies deliver in what pledges I list. Otherwise,
uf wt please her Majesty, I could take himself, his wife,
whois a great bringer in of Scots, and perhaps his son,
Hugh Roe (Red Hugh), by sending them a boat with
wines,” May 2, 1587.
This “boat with wines” was not only the source of
all Red Hugh’s sorrows, but will be found to have been
a grand determining factor in the history of the huge
convulsion known as the Nine Years’ War.
CHAPTER XII
WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER
THE chamber in which the boys were imprisoned was
above the entrance of the Castle, high up in the tower,
“next the turrets,” but right above the great gate of the
Castle. In front of that entrance was a bridge span-
ning this moat which surrounded the Castle. To and
fro over this bridge passed the Castle traffic. To and fro
there came and went all the men who governed Ireland,
and all the men who were interested in the government
of Ireland—the Lords of the Council and Mr. Secretary
Fenton and all the officials and clerks of the various
bureaus.
Amongst all these, sidling along softly, mild and self-
contained, attracting no particular attention, wended in
and out Mr, Patrick Foxe, Walsingham’s Castle spy,
who spied on rulers as well as ruled. Walsingham’s
curious, suspicious eyes roved here daily, looking through
Mr. Patrick’s. Fitzwilliam and his Council were as
much under surveillance as the dynasts were. With
difficulty did Patrick get “a clerk’s room” in the Castle;
but he got it, and in the evenings, from his lodgings,
wrote excellent letters to his patron, very brief and
pithy, as full of information as an egg is of meat. Red
‘Hugh never gave that ne it thought, though he might
78 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
have seen him every day sidling in softly, but Patrick
thought a great deal about Red Hugh. There came
and went daily big Sir George Carew, Master of the
Ordnance, his thoughts and talk all of lasts of powder,
of lead, match, calivers, falconets, and culverins, of
skians, battle-axes, and war harness. In the Castle he
had his own office, where he audited the accounts of his
deputy-masters all over the realm; this year, at his
solicitation, Burleigh had that office newly “ planked.”
Sir George will be a great man yet, President of
Munster, Earl of Totness, supposed author and certain
hero of Pacata Hibernia, and do doughty things—a
clever, sly, and very capable official Red Hugh saw
him a hundred times pass there, little dreaming what a
cowardly stroke of death would one day fall upon him
from that big Master of the Ordnance.
The boy’s chamber looked eastward down College
Green towards the ruinous towers of the Monastery of
All Saints. From his window, if these towers did not
obstruct, Red Hugh saw ships come and go in Dublin
Harbour; saw of a summer morning the red sun rise
gloriously from the waves of the Irish Sea. Dermot
MacMurrough founded that monastery ; and fair Eva,
Strongbow’s wife, confirmed the foundation, and King
John approved. But the end had arrived for All
Saints as for so much else in Ireland. Red Hugh saw
those sacred towers and walls fallmg. Masons were at
work there in his time pulling down the old Norman-
Irish pile, making way for the advent of modern culture
and a clear space for the building of Trinity College,
Dublin. Red Hugh saw the learned Usher, Archdeacon
Usher, father of the very learned Usher, walking
about in his sombre garb, well-pleased, and the scarlet-
cloaked Mayor and Aldermen of Dublin assisting. To
WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER 19
Usher and those scarlet-cloaked persons Ireland owes
her university, and it was a-building while Red Hugh
was imprisoned in that Castle chamber looking east-
ward, scarce a bow-shot from the builders.
There was no lack of amusing sights to be seen by
the boy from that window. There he saw the great
Perrott ride out, girt by a crowd of chiefs and nobles, his
own father, Sir Hugh O’Donnell, one of them ; and pale,
anxious-looking Fitzwilliam, full of aches and griefs, ride
in, his coach drawn, perhaps, by Perrott’s war-horse,
“fairest and best in Ireland,” matched with another, and
by his side the Lady Anne Fitzwilliam. She was sister
of Sir Henry Sidney and aunt of the immortal Philip,
gentlest, bravest, and most beautiful of Elizabethan
men—the divine Astrophel. There, too, he saw ride
into Court, Astrophel’s friend and poet, the dreaming
Spenser, and heard his horse’s hoofs sound hollow in the
echoing arches below. The dreaming Spenser had his
fits of wakefulness, too, could look sharply after his own
interests, and do a little fighting and plundering quite
in the style of an Irish dynast. Would the reader
care to glance at the author of the Faery Queen at
home during the period of Red Hugh’s captivity, and
see the dreaming man wide awake, his oaten reed
racked for a while, and singing robes on their peg?
“ October 12, 1589.
“ Maurice de Rupe and Fermoy—i. e. the Lord Roche—
to Walsingham—wishes the enclosed to be lard before the
Queen.
“Edmund Spenser, falsely pretending title to certain
castles and sixteen plowlands, hath taken possession thereof.
Also, by threatening and menacing the said Lord Roche's
80 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
tenants, and by seizing their cattle, and beating the Lord
Roche's servants and bailiffs, he has wasted sia plowlands
of his lordship’s lands,”
And Sir Walter Raleigh Red Hugh saw too, and
surely with enthusiastic admiration, a man admired by
the whole world. He was here during Hugh’s cap-
tivity, attended by Irish boy-chiefs, his pages, for the
most part scions of the great Clan Carty in the South,
where his estates lay. Most of the Irish chiefs of the
next great rebellion were educated by Englishmen, or
under English influences, direct or indirect, which is a
curious fact.
There oftentimes Red Hugh saw his brother-in-law,
the strongly-built and swarthy Earl of Tyrone, ride in
to take his seat in the Council, stopping a moment to
look up, and make friendly inquiries of the poor captive
lad. Ever gay, light-hearted, and witty was that
accomplished Earl, though he played for such terrible
stakes. |
Red Hugh’s sister Jane was Countess of Tyrone, and
the Earl his own fast friend. Also at Dungannon there
was a little girl who was supposed to be Red Hugh’s
sweetheart, and was his betrothed child-wife. Let us
hope that he wrote her letters during his captivity by
such means of communication as sflorae)
In June 1588 Hugh’s father was at the Castile
assisting in Perrott’s glorious exodus. Once again in
the Armada winter the boy, with what feoliti gat saw
‘his old father surrounded by his chief gentlemen and
gallowglasses, and many familiar Tir-Connallian faces,
ride over the bridge of the moat. Sir Hugh this time
brought a ransom for the boy, not yellow gold only, but
thirty olive-complexioned Spaniards in handlocks.
WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER roll
There were wet eyes amongst those Tir-Connallians
as they saw above them the poor captive boy look out
from his prison cell. The olive-complexioned Spaniards
were hanged in the Castle yard—every man of them.
Nevertheless, Sir Hugh and the Tir-Connallians could
not recover their boy chief. The Queen and Burleigh
said “ No.”
There, too, his cousin Hugh Maguire, Lord of Fer-
managh, big, handsome, ruddy-faced, a young giant,
and as valiant as he was big, shouted up to the grated
window, jolliest and bravest of all the chieftains. Sir
Warham St. Leger, too, Vice-President of Munster,
might have been seen there by the boy. If Sir
Warham and Maguire met they probably contemplated
each other's big proportions with respect. They were
the two best horsemen in Ireland, and fell by each
other’s hands under the cliffs of Carrigrohan, by the
margin of the winding, silvery Lee—two splendid
types of sixteenth century Irish chivalry. This was
that chieftain who was so ready to receive a sheriff
into Fermanagh, but wished first to learn his eric, that
when the sheriff was slain he might levy the eric off
the country. The strong hand which had raised Hugh
to the captainship of the Maguire nation was no other
than that brave Donald the bastard whom the Dark-
Daughter slew. Many a familiar face was raised to
that window, many a manly voice shouting kindly
Gaelic or Elizabethan English was uplifted there;
Hugh and his comrades pleasantly responsive from
above.
He saw Feagh MacHugh O’Byrne ride in there
under safe-conduct from the Viceroy, having the
guarantee of Loftus, the Chancellor, for his return,
and attended by young Captain Dudley Loftus, the
G
82 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
Chancellor’s son. All Dublin ran in crowds to see that
black-browed, dark-eyed prince of rapparee lords and
black-mailers, the arch-enemy of the Pale. Few men
looked on his stern visage without hatred, for few were
the Palesmen who had not lost a relative or dear friend
through him. Amongst other notables slain by Feagh
was the fat Sir George Carew, father of the big Master
of the Ordnance, slain by Feagh in the battle of
Glenmalure. Sir Walter Raleigh and Master Edmund
Spenser narrowly escaped death on the same occasion.
This visit of Feagh to Fitzwilliam was paid shortly
after the Lord Deputy’s arrival, in the autumn of 1588.
Remember this swarthy rapparee lord of the Wicklow
mountains. We shall meet him again.
The great Adam Loftus himself—archbishop, chancel-
lor, and councillor—Red Hugh saw a hundred times,
once a poor chaplain, now a pillar of the State. Rich,
prosperous, and powerful was Adam Loftus, allied
through marriages and betrothals “with the best and
chiefest names in all the Pale—men who had the
dispending of two or even three hundred pounds by
the year!” Another notable ecclesiastic and councillor
wended there daily, faring to and from the Council
Board, Bishop Jones, of Meath, solid and prudent,
though he would cry out when excited at cards, “ God's
wounds, man, play the ten of hearts;” and Miler
Magrath, Archbishop of Cashel, the over-prudent and
cunning, a mighty eater of bishoprics. When Miler
could not be permitted to eat a fresh bishopric, he
quartered his hounds and huntsmen upon it. The
young giant, Hugh Maguire, may have been to the
Castle to complain of Miler’s hounds, for he had
already written a complaint of such doings on the part
of that mighty southern pluralist, who went about in
WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER 83
armour like a man of war, and had his life-guard like
the chief of an unshired country. Bishop O’Brien,
of Killaloe, another of these strange divines, staked
Church livings and ecclesiastical lands on the fall of
the dice. No wonder his sons became stout rebels.
The Mac-an-Aspick O’Briens, sons of the bishop, were
left. slenderly provided for by their jolly sire. They
were mostly ecclesiastical scapegraces, these Irish
bishops of the Reformation, half courtiers, half chief-
tains, and very unpastoral; perhaps no worse or no
better than any other men in that strange century of
transition, only very unpastoral.
Red Hugh and his comrades saw a great deal of
interesting, bright, many-coloured life from that window
above the entrance to the Castle. They were allowed
to receive visitors, too, though no doubt under very
strict conditions. Letters, too, surely came to him,
first read by the proper officials, from his mother
among others. Letter-writing was far more common
in Ehzabethan Ireland than one might expect. The
Dark-Daughter was famous for womanly accomplish-
ments. Her mother was that cultivated lady whom
Sir Henry Sidney so much admired. We have already
seen one of the Dark-Daughter’s letters. It is not
only possible but probable that he was written to
occasionally by his sister Nuala, and his brothers Rory
and Manus, and little Cathbarr (Top of Battle), From
home, too, he received hampers of provisions and good
things made up with maternal love and tears ; for it is
another astonishing fact that the Viceroys who im-
mured hostages looked to their kinsfolk to supply
them with food. If the kinsfolk did not, and the
Christian men and women of Dublin did not, the poor
boys starved.
84 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
When Burleigh rated. Fitzwilliam about a certain
escape of hostages, the Viceroy replied—“It were
better they escaped than lie to rot and starve m the
Grate.”
“None whom I took,’ observed Perrott, “were by
their kinsfolk suffered to starve.”
Neither recognized a duty to supply food. Truly an
age of iron, heey gilded !
How went on, ice years, the great game in which
Red Hugh was a little-regarded pawn? What of the
kings and queens, and the greater pieces on the board ?
As a move in that game, Queen Elizabeth put our hero
into that square which stood above the main entrance of
the Castle in Dublin. It was no accident. The Queen
put him there, and knew very well that he was there,
and, as we have seen, never forgot Red Hugh’s locus
in quo. The great game went well for the Reformation
just now. Elizabeth and Maurice,. Prince of Orange,
were giving a good account of the Spaniard in the
Lowlands. Henry of Navarre, strengthened with a great
many crowns sent him by Elizabeth, was baffling the
Spaniard in the South of France, and Parma and the
Guises in the North. Protestant Germany, aided too
by our Queen’s money, was stirring in the same cause.
Pope Sixtus, her arch-foe, and yet chief admirer, was
dead. Philip was very old and exceedingly crippled by
the destruction of his Armada. Elizabeth had harried
his peninsular coast with a fleet and army, and English
marine adventurers were troubling the Spaniard upon
the deep, far and wide fluttering his galleons over
the water-ways of the world. Catholic England,
having now no Catholic Mary for Queen, was quiet
and loyal, though Sir William Stanley and many others
had taken service under the Spanish King. James VI.
WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER 85
of Scotland was friendly. He this year sent a gift to
the Queen as an earnest of his good-will. The gift
was an Irish dynast, his name, a celebrated one in
contemporary Irish history, Sir Brian of the Ramparts,
O’Rourke, Lord of Leitrim.
Old Burleigh, now seventy-one, was anxious to retire
from office, but the Queen rallied him back to harness.
“T never saw the Lord Treasurer so lusty or so fresh
of hue,’ writes an admirer this year, The Queen
herself was fifty-six, and would dance, “I assure you,
seven or eight galliards of a morning, besides music
and singing,’ and was also as prudent and courageous
as ever. The star of Essex was rising clear and bright
exceedingly ; he was but twenty-four, yet already a
power in the land. Walsingham was dead, and his
great army of spies (Patrick Foxe amongst them) left
without a paymaster. He died this year (1590), and
died poor, having spent all his substance in the Queen’s
service. The manner in which the great Secretary
would bully and rebuke Fitzwilliam and Bishop Jones
and other creatures of that type in Ireland is quite
exhilarating. One can almost see them pale and
quaking, and bowing down to the very ground. His
only child, remember, widow of Sir Philip Sidney, was
now the Countess of Robert, Earl of Essex. Her third
husband will be an Irish chieftain.
But our concern is not with the great pieces on the
board, only with the small. Let us return to that
ill-starred lad and his comrades.
Some three months after his incarceration Red
Hugh was visited by a young Oxonian en route to the
west for the Christmas holidays. Under what style
the youth was entered on the books of that seat of
learning I don’t know. It was probably Bernard
86 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
Rourke, but his barbaric name when the lad was at
home was Brian Ogue na Sampthach O’Rourke—~. e.
Brian O’Rourke, the younger, of the Battle-axes.
He was eldest son of O'Rourke, Lord of Leitrim, that
very proud western chief referred to already, and was
first cousin, once removed, of our hero. The sons of
the Irish gentry were already beginning to find their
way to Oxford. I discover there, these .years, besides
the young gentleman mentioned, Richard, son of the
chief of the High Burkes, William, son of the chief
of Clan Kelly, and several others. Into Hugh’s mournful
chamber, on some dull December day, arrayed in the
height of the English vogue, burst this lively youth,
making a sunshine in that gloomy chamber, though
followed and watched by the constable, or one of his
subordinates. Red Hugh, we learn, during his confine-
ment, was permitted to receive visitors. This young
Oxonian was destined to play a great part in the later
portion of Red Hugh’s career. Students of Irish history
know something of the Battle of the Curlew Mountains.
That battle was won by Red Hugh mainly through
the prowess of his cousin, Brian Ogue, Oxon. Red
Hugh, his fine gold a little dulled by captivity and
sorrow, recognized with difficulty his Irish cousin in this
fashionable youth, who rattled off English as if to the
manner born, and was full of foreign experiences, un-
Irish ways and phrases, and curious modern instances.
Hugh was for doleful captivity, he knew not how
long, or whether his red head might not, ere summer,
exhibit itself on a stake above the Castle for the
offences of his people. Brian was for home, holidays,
hunting, hawking, and all manner of rural sports and
amusements in a territory where he was heir presump-
tive to the Chieftainship, and where he would be little
WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER 87
troubled by that bée noir of Irish Elizabethan gentle-
men, the sheriff. In the adjoming county of Sligo
there was, indeed, an abominable sheriff, a fellow who,
according to young Davy O’Dowd, “chief of his name,’
spared not to take from Sligoese gentlemen “horse”
(war horse), “hackney, hawk, hound, mantle, or table-
cloth; yea, even if it be a man’s wife or daughter,
which Taafe doth fancy, he must have her to his will.”
In Leitrim, Brian Ogue’s county, there was, indeed, a
sheriff, but one who was humble enough, and thought
more about saving his own skin than of interfering with
O’Rourke privileges and seignories. Whoever there
took to his own use horses, hawks, table-cloths, or
young women, it was not the sheriff.
The cousins had a good deal to tell each other,
which must be left to the imagination. In the end,
the Oxford man, with a sufficient escort of O’Rourke
horse, went cheerily westward, and poor Hugh turned
sadly to his prison avocations, whatever they were.
In the ensuing summer, a little after Sir John Perrott’s
glorious departure, the Imperial and Imsh Councils
were fluttered by unwelcome tidings of the Oxonian.
Young O’Rourke, accompanied by an Irish gentleman
named Charles Trevor, suddenly absconded from Oxford.
The authorities knew well the significance of this flight.
It meant that O'Rourke of Leitrim was about to go
into rebellion. And, sure enough, not long after-
wards, Patrick Foxe, a Castle clerk, but in Walsingham’s
pay as a spy, inditing one of his little succinct notes to
Walsingham, informed his honour that old O’Rourke
“desired his Sheriff to shift somewhere else for an
office.” Efforts were made to intercept the fugitives.
Trevor was taken at Chester, conveyed to Dublin, and
immured in the Castle as a fellow-prisoner with our
88 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
hero; but Brian Ogue escaped, and got home. His
Oxford education was ended. Brian Ogue of the
Battle-axes no longer cried Adswm in the college
classes. ‘“ Barbara, felapton, daru fertoque,’ and the
other educational processes of Elizabethan Oxford, will
have to go on without Brian Ogue na Sampthach.
The boy is cracking crowns in the West, and will crack
logic no more. When next he turns up in the history
of his country, it is in this wise :—
paws esterday, wn the afternoon, Sir Brian O'Rourke's
two sons, his brothers, and all his force, to the number
of 400 gallow-glasses and shot, with forty horsemen,
preyed all Tirreragh”—a baronial division of Sligo—
“from Downeyle to Touregoe, burnt dwers towns in the
same, and murdered certain sulyects also. The prey
which they carried with them is esteemed to be in number
3000 cows and near 1000 mares. The country crieth out
jor her Majesty's forces to defend them. O Rourke sent
Jor all the wood-kerne and bad members dwelling on these
borders, and licensed them to prey, rob, and spoil her
Majesty's subjects within the province, and especially this
county.”
Brian Ogue, I have not the least doubt, found such
life a vast deal pleasanter than ‘ Barbara, felapton’;
and observe, too, that if the boy construed Homer
while at Oxford, he was making himself acquainted
with a state of society exactly similar to that which
prevailed in his own time in the west of Ireland, and
of which he himself was a chief figure. Returning to
his father’s castle at Dromahaire, with those fine droves
of cattle and herds of mares, swept out of Tirreragh of
the green pastures, Brian Ogue had his own Homers
to sing his praises, and an to trvwmphe to which the
WHAT HUGH SAW FROM HIS BOWER $9
liveliest of college wine-parties must have seemed very
small beer indeed.
The young Oxonian was now only serving his ap-
prenticeship with his father and his uncles. Shortly
afterwards we find him leading O’Rourke’s forces, or a
band of them, and almost making an end of Davy
O’Dowd’s injurious sheriff.
“Last Friday, O Rourke’s son, Brian,’ the same who
ran away from Oxford, “murdered (sic) twenty-five
soldiers and three young gentlemen on the highway, in
company of the Sheriff of Sligo, who escaped from them
sore wounded.”
The wounded sheriff was David O’Dowd’s béte noir,
the unconscionable rascal who scrupled not to convey
even a poor gentleman’s table-cloth.
In fact, during all the time of Red Hugh’s captivity
the West was convulsed with ceaseless war; and
Hugh’s Oxford cousin keeps perpetually appearing and
disappearing amid the stormy battle-axe business that
raged there. Indeed, the conflict between Bingham,
President of Connaught, and this rebellious western
chieftainry, mad about sheriffs and other such matters,
never closed at all until Hugh himself went into it, in
the general rebellion known as the Nine Years’ War—
the grand final struggle between the reguli and the
sheriffs. The reguli and the sheriffs could not live
together; either these or those had to go. The sheriffs
were usually strangers, often low men, and even shop-
keepers. Great gentlemen, especially great Irish gentle-
men, found it awfully hard to obey such fellows.
Observe, too, that these sheriffs were ill-paid and ill-
controlled, and went about with small armies exacting
“coigne and livery” at discretion from the tenants of
the gentry and the gentry themselves. Remember,
90 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
too, that before the advent of the sheriffs the chieftains
were essentially a sort of kings. Flesh and blood
could not stand it, especially such flesh and blood.
Sure we may be that the young Oxonian went into
this red business with great alacrity.
To our hero all this western battleaxing had more
than a spectacular interest. Most of Connaught was,
properly, O’Donnell-land. The flashing of steel there
and the roar of calivers arose out of territories over
which his house, of old time, had exercised a strong
dominion, and perhaps will again. Things, however,
of a very different nature and complexion demand
attention now. eae
One summer a strange procession passed, under the
boy’s eyes, down the slope of Castle Hill. There
halbertmen and trumpeters and “ Queen’s messengers,”
as a sort of guard of honour, enclosed a terrible figure,
It was a priest, clad in new ecclesiastical raiment
provided by the authorities. His countenance, never
comely, the executioner had made yet more horrible
by mutilation. This priest has no nose. Vice and
cunning were stamped upon his countenance; yet he ~
went down Castle Hill, stepping proudly, on his way
to London to the Imperial Council.
CHAPTER XIII
PERROTT THE OVERBOLD -
LAME Justice, blind and lame, has been questing
for Perrott ever since that triumphal outgoing, search-
ing for him by devious ways and through strange
regions. Now at last the world’s slow-hound has got
upon his traces, and has him well in the wind. A
terrible hunting is abroad, and the quarry is the great
Viceroy who stole Hugh Roe.
One powerful, cals minded, and determined ‘foe
Perrott left behind him in Ireland; it was the new
Viceroy. ‘Till Perrott was well off on Treland’s shores
Fitzwilliam was painfully aware that he was himself
a mere nobody and a cipher. That was hard to-endure,
and, even then, Perrott’s sharp and ill-controlled tongue
had uttered scornful words concerning him, which
reached Fitzwilliam’s ears and rankled in the soul of
the sick man. At all events Fitzwilliam was hardly
warm in office when he began to “nibble at” bis prede-
cessor, and with a most mordant and venomous tooth.
“He took away the tapestries of the State apart-
ments,” complained the new Deputy to the lords of
the Council.
“They were my own property,’ replied Perrott.
“The young women of my household have cut them
up for stools and cushions.”
91
92 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
Fitzwilliam.—“ He treated me very ill before his de-
parture, leaving me in a weak way for the governance
of this turbulent people.”
Perrott.— ‘I put into his hands, in Dublin, all the
lords of Ireland. If he let them go without taking
some straight course with them for the government of
the realm, that is his default.”
Fitzwilliam.—“ Your lordships, he showed me a face
of unkindness in all things.”
Perrott.—“ By no means, but the reverse. And as
a proof of it I gave him a very fine horse, a horse of
war—a very fine horse.”
Fitzwilliam.—“ Your lordships, he was a very sorry
beast, and unfit for service (war), so that I had to put
him under Lady Fitzwilliam’s coach, matched with
another. And I refused him first when offered, and if
he send for the old beast now I will give him to the
messenger, and a present to boot.”
Perrott (fuming).—*“ Your lordships, he was known to
be the fairest and best horse in Ireland. And I think
he refused him as bishops do their bishoprics. And
he might well put him under a coach, for he cannot
ride, such are his impediments.”
This last was a savage stroke on Perrott’s part.
Then the wordy war died away, and Perrott forgot all
about it, but Fitzwilliam did not forget. Henceforth
Fitzwilliam hated Perrott with a fell hatred, and longed
for his destruction. He was a curious mixture of
strength and weakness, of resolution, talent, cunning, and
pusillanimity. One of his State documents runs thus :—
“T have to complain to your lordships of Lady
Bourchier, who last Sunday sat im Lady Fitzwilliam’s
pew!”
Yet the overthrow of such a man as Perrott seemed
PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 93
for a long time impossible. Perrott, the foremost man
of his day, the head of a great party, the Queen’s half-
brother, “enabled” with host of friends and followers,
the man who ruled Ireland like an irresponsible King,
and without an army. Such a viceroyalty as Perrott’s the
Empire had never seen. It was not only splendidly
brilliant in outward show, but substantially beneficial
to the State, and to the Irish authority and power of
his mistress. The free Parliament of the Irish nation,
which he convened in Dublin in 1585, attended by
representatives of every princely family in the island,
ratified anew the title of Elizabeth as Regina Hiberme,
did everything that Perrott told it to do, and but for
the obstacle supplied by Poyning’s Law, would have
granted the Queen an Irish subsidy, mirabile dictu !
Without drawing a sword, Perrott caused the chief-
tains of Connaught to surrender their regal rights and
descend to the position of mere subjects, a really great
achievement, in point of fact, the conquest of a Pro-
vince. And he did all this without an army, by the
magic of his name and fame, and the unique force and
fascination of his personality, aided somewhat, too, we
may presume, by his great stature. The simple chief-
tainry loved magnitude in a ruler, being themselves, as
a rule, men of inches. But what chiefly overawed
their minds, and predisposed them to the most willing
obedience, was the fact that he was a King’s son. His
illegitimacy was hardly a slur in a country where, if
any, only a slight distinction was drawn between the
sons of wives and the sons of concubines, and where
the State, when State purposes were to be subserved,
had no hesitation in preferrmg the unlawful to the
lawful issue of the chieftains. How could the bar
sinister be anywhere a serious disadvantage in an age
94, THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
when Henry VIII. seriously proposed to exalt his
bastard son, the Earl of Southampton, to the throne
of England? Perrott governed Ireland like an absolute
monarch, partly by reason: of his personal qualities,
but mainly because all men believed that he was Sir
John Tudor, the only surviving son of King Henry
VIII. Since the time of Richard Plantagenet, Duke
of York, these king-loving Irish reguli had seen no
viceroy so much to their mind.
When Perrott returned to England, aud took his
seat in the Council after his amazing and unpre-.
cedented viceroyalty, he was by far the greatest
man in the empire, and was perfectly aware him-
self of the fact. He was a soldier of proved
valour, skill, and conduct, an administrator of unex-
ampled efficiency and success. He had governed
a turbulent and warlike nation as that nation had
never been governed before. In trying times, when
the Queen’s sovereignty seemed to quake to the
blast of the Spanish terror, the State had leaned
with its whole weight upon Perrott, and on his strong
shoulders he had upheld the brunt of the same as if it
were a feather. When Perrott took his seat at the
Imperial Council-table 1t was with the air of a man
who had done great things, and was about to do
greater; of a man who intended to make his presence
felt there and his will observed. He was too high, proud,
brave, and impetuous to veil himself in hypocrisies,
and seem to go one way when he meant to go another.
With cards scarcely concealed, Perrott now sat down
to play at a table where men’s heads were the stakes,
where the game was dead-earnest, the very rigour of
the game, and where, above each player, suspended by
an invisible hair, glittered always the shining axe of
PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 95
the headsman. At that table Perrott, his hand full of
trump cards, his heart full of proud self-confidence
and conscious rectitude of purpose, sat down to play.
Voices from within, and also voices from without,
called to him to play boldly and for the highest
stakes. The voices from within we know, or can
guess; the voices from without, what were they ?
Now, and for a long time past, the English people,
by every known iden were urging the Queen to
nominate her successor, and so give contentment and
a sense of security to the land. This, not only with
emphasis but with passion; the Queen declared that she
would not do. Her reasons were partly feminine and
personal, partly patriotic, chiefly the former. She
would not, she said, consent “to have her shroud
held up before her eyes.” She looked upon the ap-
pointment of a successor much as weak men at all times
regard the making of a will, and Queen Hlizabeth,
“the lion-hearted daughter of the Tudors,’ was in
many respects both very feminine and very weak.
Historians, with their “lion-hearted daughter of the
Tudors,” are too apt to forget that the Queen was a
woman under her robes, and, after all, only Elizabeth
Tudor—a woman and a Celt.
Let me here make a short digression, and tell the
story of her Highness’s aching tooth.
The royal tooth ached, and the Imperial Council met
and debated upon this high matter. It was like a
meeting of the Roman Flamens, met to consider a
portent, such as that the statue of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus had sneezed thrice, or broken into a sweat.
Elizabeth, it must always be remembered, was a sort
of goddess, her cult deeper and sincerer than it is
easy to imagine in our times. A large State corre-
96 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
spondence now ensued concerning the great question,
who was the best dentist in the world ?—to whom,
beyond all others, would England confide the task of
extracting that tooth, or of causing it to cease to ache ?
The best was discovered on the continent, but instead
of flymg to the relief of her Highness he only wrote
letters of advice—“If the tooth be sapped and under-
mined, then If it show a cavity at the top,
then——.,” ete., etc. Eventually, great rewards and
honours being proffered, this wisest of dentists crossed
the seas with his box of instruments, reached White-
hall, and in the presence of the Queen’s Councillors of
State examined the Royal tooth, looked wiser than
any owl, and finally pronounced in favour of extract-
ing. But at the sight of the instruments her
Highness’s great heart failed; the lion-hearted
daughter of the Tudors, though she could hurl foul
scorn upon Parma, and do and say many mighty
things, quailed before the dentist and his glittering
forceps. In this emergency his Grace of Canterbury
advanced.
“Your Highness,” he said, “I have not many teeth
left, therefore can ill spare even one from the poor
remnant. But, to convince your Highness, in a matter
of this moment, how very small and transient is the
dolour, I shall e’en permit the chirurgeon to draw
forth a jaw-tooth.”
This was done, his Grace all the time smiling as
hard as he could, and testifying in every way that, so
far from being dolorous, the extraction of jaw-teeth
was rather pleasant. |
Nevertheless, her Highness could not be persuaded.
She preferred to abide her aching tooth.
PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 97
Queen Elizabeth, as I say, being very feminine,
would by no means consent to the appointment of a
successor, or the hanging up of her shroud before her
eyes. There was another reason still more feminine
which she used to allege. She never could forget, she
said, the manner in which she herself had been courted
while she was still only the Princess Elizabeth, during
the lifetime of her sister Mary, and all because she was
known and recognized as the heiress-apparent to the
Throne.
Then, too, she probably perceived that to guide
England well through those troublous times it was
essential that she should not part with one iota of
her sovereignty, and the appointment of a successor
would certainly, to some extent, diminish her lustre
and impair her power. She, Elizabeth, would con-
tinue to be for England’s life’s sake, as well as for
her own comfort and glory—the sole fountain of all
honour and all power. To her alone should all eyes
turn, all homage be rendered, and all knees bow. The
Tudor princes were far indeed from being angels, but
they instinctively identified their own glory and power
with the interests of their people.
Now one of the rules by which the Tudors directed
their policy was to tolerate no great subject. The
Tudors passed to the Throne of England over the ruins
of the great territorial houses. While they reigned the
ancient nobility, such of them as still survived, were
kept well down. The Tudors governed by favour of the
nation through agents whom they themselves selected.
When any such became too great he was sooner or
later thrown down. Often he did not see whence
the blow came. The Sovereign decreed his fall, and
he fell. When Perrott laid down that triumphant
H
98 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
viceroyalty, and returned to London he was in danger.
He did not know it himself. If any one hinted such
a thing to Perrott we can imagine how he in his great
tempestuous way—which reminded men of King Hal
—would have scoffed at such a thought.
“ Have I not served my royal mistress and sister as
she has never been served before? Have I not been
faithful to her in intention and in fact? Am I not so
now? Man,I perceive thou art of small discernment.
No one can prove, no one can imagine aught against
me.”
So Perrott might have stormed against the adviser,
and used far “larger” words than these, and yet the
adviser would have been right. Perrott with the best
intentions was in jeopardy, and even great jeopardy,
He was in jeopardy exactly because of those brilliant
services of which he was so proud. He was great,
famous, and powerful, and therefore he was in danger.
The Queen was his kinswoman, but, as a faithful
adviser would have taken care to intimate, “for that
very reason your honour is in all the greater danger.
If you were a Perrott, this magnitude to which you
have grown might be tolerated, but you are a Tudor,
not a Perrott, and there are men (not a few) in the
two realms who would make you King.” Perrott’s
only chance of safety was to walk humbly, to order
himself lowly and reverently, to forget or to seem to
forget that he had done great things, to forget that
a very warlike nation, a days sail from England,
was at his beck and call, to be very courteous
and forbearing with all men, even with those whom
he knew to be cowards or nincompoops, and, above all,
not to meddle with affairs of high Imperial moment, or
use his power and prestige in any way to force the will
PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 99
of the Queen. By such conduct alone could Perrott
remain in public life and save his head, and in every
respect he did exactly the reverse.
Openly, and even furiously, he set himself against
the succession claims of the King of Scots. James
King of Scots despatched a herald, or pursuivant, to
him while he was yet Viceroy. Perrott treated the
ambassador with scant courtesy, and delayed to give
him his discharge.
“Your honour,” said the Scot, “I wait an answer for
my king.”
“Thy king! thy king!” cried Perrott, “What
care I for thy king? I will give thee an answer when
and how I like.”
Returning to England, he opposed the Scotch King’s
clams in the same high-handed and tempestuous
fashion. With what Aebeny ¢ That I cannot say, nor
who was the puppet whose claims Perrott advocated,
but of this we may be sure, that Perrott and the great
party which supported him, intended that Perrott, and
Perrott alone, should govern England. In his madness
he seems to have prescribed some course for the Queen,
urging it as one who had the power to force her will.
Some one entering the Queen’s chamber, from which
her half-brother had just gone out, found her Highness
weeping; we are not told whether those tears were
tears of sorrow or of wrath, possibly both. Perrott had
dared to ¢a/k in an overbearing manner to her—her,
Queen of England, France, and Ireland—possibly with
the best intentions, as Knox had talked to Mary Stuart,
and the Queen had not taken his exhortations in good
part.
A very simple man was Perrott if he thought that
he could bend that high imperial soul, or drive her
100 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
by a hair’s breadth from her predetermined course.
Perrott did not force the Queen’s will, but he did
precipitate his own ruin. He would have it so. He
was by no means wary enough, or sure-footed enough
for the high slippery altitudes where he was now
walking, nay striding, and even swaggering with reck-
less self-confidence.
Historians, of a certain kind, think that the reports
of the State trials of those days settle everything.
“Look at the august court which condemned Anne
Boleyn,” cries Mr. Froude. “Could such a court decree
aught that was unjust?” The so-called State trials
were sham trials. The true trial was in the mind of
the Sovereign and a select few sitting in secret. The
true trial was never reported. No one outside of that
high court knew anything about it. There the accused
was tried and condemned for his or her true offence.
In the State trial he or she was accused of something
else, something that would hit in otherwise with State
policy. He might be accused of “Spaniolizing,” or
hasty indecent speech, or she of light conduct, or I
know not what. Who, for example, believes the mon-
strous charges urged against Anne Boleyn? All the
steps by which Perrott was destroyed we know. They
may be followed one by one in the contemporary State
Papers, and amongst those steps are judicial verdicts
directed by the Crown. The downfall of Perrott is but
a type of the downfall of many, male and female, in
that terrible century.
Perrott was now a doomed man. His greatness, his
power, and his birth were of themselves all but sufficient
to sink him in such an age, when the policy of the
State of England was governed by axioms dear to the
ancient tyrant, and tall poppies fell, simply because
PERROTT THE OVERBOLD 101
they were tall. But in addition Perrott had shown
himself masterful, and this decided his fate. Queen
Klizabeth would have no Mayor of the Palace. If any
great man aspired to be that, she first humbled him
and reduced his credit and prestige. If, after that, he
persisted, his blood would be on his own head.
“JT never knew one to do well,’ writes Perrott, “in
that realm of Ireland, but he was afterwards stung and
bitten.” So was Perrott, but in his case the stinging
was to the heart, and the biting with fangs spurting
the poison of death.
CHAPTER XIV
EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE
OvER sleeping Dublin the lark soared and sang from
the meadows where the Castle ward grazed their horses,
It was night, but the dawn was not far off. Then
somewhere within the grim keep bugles sang too, and
hoarse voices sounded, and there was a noise of
preparation in the vague interior; something not part
of the daily life of the Castle was going forward there.
Hugh Roe and his comrades bestirred themselves, sat
up, made surmises, and asked each other questions in
Gaelic. They dressed darkling, and crowded to the
window, curious to learn what these untimely sounds
might mean.
It was midsummer; the glimmering dawn trembled
over land and sea, Morning, a lance of rosy gold lay
all along the grey quivering horizon of the Irish Sea.
One splash of red, deepening to blood-red, showed where |
the sun, issuing out of the womb of night, would
make his little-regarded avatar. And still the bugles
sang, bugle after bugle, and the noise of all those
interior movements slackened not but swelled. Then,
abrupt and startling, leaped forth a roll of drums and
the clear voice of fifes,in the still and dewy dawn.
Suddenly, without warning, the red eye of the sun
102
EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE 103
flashed, and it was day. The boys craned their innocent
heads between the iron stanchions, curious to see what
was coming. A solemn procession deployed now through
the wide gateway of Dublin Castle. First came
trumpeters, stepping alert and blowing, as if for a
triumph; then the fifes and drums; the Queen’s
kerne, with light feet and lighter hearts, sworded and
spear-casting warriors came next, dancing as they went,
and were succeeded in turn by stalwart and sober ranks
of armed pikemen, followed by a troop of horse in
glittering mail. Then came a young gallant, riding,
arrayed, he and his attendants, in scarlet and gold,
tall, slim, and handsome, a most courtly youth. The
letters E.R. embroidered on his left breast showed
that he was a Queen’s messenger. A miscellaneous
crowd of men, women, and children followed. The
Queen’s messenger looked back at them from time
to time, as if he were a shepherd followed by his flock.
Of this flock many seemed sad, but some gay. Amongst
the gay ones there strutted, by himself, an unwieldy
figure dressed in black, wearing a decent ecclesiastical
collar and flat cap. To judge by his garb, he seemed
a respectable if over-fed Church dignitary, and he
strutted along there with an air of self-importance, as
if conscious that he was the centre of this procession.
Such indeed he was. Once or twice he turned round
to speak with a pale, weak, fair-haired woman who
followed, leading a string of children. She and they
were neatly and decently dressed.
The hostages peering from their gate started when
they saw the man’s face. It was not pleasant to look
at. He had no nose. His countenance, charged with
vice and cunning, the executioner had made yet more
horrible by that mutilation. In spite of skilfully dis-
104 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
posed hair, an observer might have perceived too
that he had no ears. So, in the midst of his guard of
honour, and conducted by Queen’s messengers, the
earless and noseless one stepped proudly down Castle
Hill The man is black destiny on the track of
Perrott, a hound of hell slipped upon the great ex-
Viceroy by his foes, for Perrott is no longer the hunter,
he is the hunted. The eternal tragic and the tears of
things have begun at last to close round the mighty
one, for truly, as the pious Four observe, “There is no
human glory but its end is sorrow.”
How and whence arose this ominous figure, whose
transit was witnessed by the boys that lovely June
morning, when all the world looked so serene, still
steeped in the pure glory of the dawn, and while the
larks still sang their matin lay ?
During Perrott’s viceroyalty there lived in the
neighbourhood of Waterford, on the banks of the Nore,
a low priest, Sir Denis O’Rouane, a lumpish, oily, un-
wholesome-looking creature—stupid, indeed, but cun-
ning too. “Sir,” by the way, in this context has
nothing to do with knighthood. It was a title worn
then by ecclesiastics, as they now wear that of “ Father.”
Sir or Father Denis O’Rouane was not a very canonical
priest, for he had a wife, or rib of some sort, named
Margaret Leonard, and a flock of little O’Rouanes. In
spite of these impediments Sir Denis drove flourishing
religious trade with the poor people. of the. neighbour-
hood, marrying, burying, christening, laying ghosts, ete.
He led about a sister, a wife, and a string of young
children, and he had no ears; a proof that he and the
law criminal had had some mutual acquaintance. But in
spite of all, he did very well in his vocation till another
practitioner opened in the same neighbourhood. This
EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE 105
interloper had cups, vestments, and other “ Popish
paraphernalia,” including even a gorgeous super-altare.
O’Rouane could not stand up to a rival possessed of
such a plant. As his trade declined, slowly his wrath
kindled, and in his wrath he resolved to root out and
abolish this scandalous interloper. The question was
how ?
First he sought to set the authorities in motion,
upon “information received.” But that was no easy
task. In Elizabethan Ireland when a priest discharged
his functions quietly and under the rose, he was not
interfered with. If he kept clear of politics, and did
not make his presence obnoxious to the authorities,
they on their side let him alone. Sir Denis failed
in his first attempt to put down the opposition.
Turning over the problem in his dull mind, one day he
was heard to laugh softly to himself, and in the morn-
ing mounted his nag and ambled off all the way to
Dublin to see a friend.
The name of the friend was Byrd, Henry Byrd, a
scrivener by trade, a meagre, poor creature, showing a
few sandy hairs which did service for a beard, with a
nervous manner, shifty eyes, and long lean fingers, very
unlike the fat and oily digits of Sir Denis O’Rouane.
It was low water just now with Byrd, a man who had
had losses. Once he was clerk in the High Commission
Court. It was a court which was supposed to take
‘cognizance of Popery and Puritanism, and fine and con-
fine Catholics and Ultra+Protestants, but was only now
and again suffered. by the Queen to be active. Once
when. “the court was in action Byrd, instead of doing
‘his business honestly and like a good clerk,. revealed its
secrets to certain Catholic noblemen and: gentlemen,
receiving from them in return divers crowns.and even
106 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
“angels.” Byrd’s rogueries were discovered, and he
ceased to be a clerk of the High Commission Court,
but was not otherwise punished, or had undergone his
punishment at the time when Sir Denis O’Rouane rode
through the south port into Dublin. He was now only
a scrivener, and not thriving in his occupation. He
had in his possession, owing to his former office, the
autographs of many great men, amongst them the bold
and strong caligraphy with which Perrott was in the
habit of subscribing documents. In a quiet back room
of a low public-house in the Liberties, with just enough
of light by which to see each other’s ugly faces, and a
supply of agua vite between them, this pair of rascals,
the fat Celt and the lean Saxon, met, collogued, and
came to an agreement. “ Your hand upon that,’ quoth
Sir Denis at parting, and the lean hand and the oily
one pressed each other affectionately.
Next morning Sir Denis rode through the south
port, homewards bound, with much fat satisfaction
in his face. He had in his bosom a warrant addressed
to the Sheriff of Waterford, and subscribed with the
name of Perrott, directing him to search that opposition
house for Popish paraphernalia. Some unknown third
hand now intervened, and in due time the warrant
found its way into the sheriff’s office. Presently the
sheriff and his men broke into the opposition house and
carried off the whole plant, swper-altare and all. Sir Denis
in this manner abolished that unconscionable poacher on
his preserves; business revived; the little O’Rouanes,
who for a while had pined, were now joyfully conscious
of having a sufficiency of bread and meat in their
stomachs, and warm clothes on their backs, and
Margaret Leonard’s respect for her lord and master,
which had drooped during those evil days, waxed
EMERGENCE OF THE NOSELESS ONE 107
again, and Sir Denis became ‘her man of men, the
meritorious food-provider of that uncanonical yet
human little establishment there on the banks of the
Nore in the south. But then, as in the time of the
old poet, “Punishment, though lame, seldom fails to
overtake the wretch going on before.” It was no part
of Perrott’s policy to vex or distress pious Catholics
who lived quietly, and there is reason to suppose that
the owner of the swper-altare was not another ecclesi-
astical rogue and blackleg like Sir Denis, but a religious
man, quietly and without offence ministering to the
spiritual needs of his flock. Perrott when he heard
about this unauthorized breaking into a religious house
was very angry, and directed a searching inquiry. The
whole story of the forgery was laid bare; Sir Denis
and Byrd were arrested and tried before the Castle
Chamber, which was the Irish counterpart of the Star
Chamber. - The two rogues were found guilty. Byrd,
though the actual forger, was, as the weaker vessel,
only sentenced to stand in the pillory, and to endure
twelve months’ imprisonment. Sir Denis, as “the
superior fiend,” being already earless, was condemned
on this occasion to lose his nose, and remain a prisoner
in the castle for a time which does not appear. Sir
Denis’s nose was accordingly “ bitten off” by one of the
constable’s men—with steel.. When Perrott left Ireland,
this inveterate scapegrace, as well as our boy hero and
his friends, were inmates of Dublin Castle. There, in
his melancholy cell, steadily losing flesh, sat Sir Denis
O’Rouane, darkly brooding over the past, the present,
and the future, and in a humble, thatched dwelling in
the south a pale face was growing daily paler and more
wistful, and a flock of little O’Rouanes, not now in good
liking, wondered what had become of their dad. Mean-
108 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
time, in his cell sat and brooded the noseless one, but
his thoughts did not turn towards self-reformation.
Yet, though forgotten by all, the noseless one was
destined to become a figure in history, and will be
remembered when his betters are forgotten.
CHAPTER XV
O’ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY
In the winter of 1589 one of Fitzwilliam’s jackals,
prowling round amongst the prisoners in search of
possible matter of accusation against Perrott, inter-
viewed the priest in his wretched cell—a sleek, well-
fed, well-dressed jackal, every, button doing its duty,
a great contrast to the captive, whose fetid clothes
hung loosely round his shrunken frame. The jackal’s
address was polished, his manner suasive and friendly.
O’Rouane perceived that he was wanted. A vague
sense of something good coming stirred within him.
It was succeeded instantly by the less agreeable reflec-
tion—“May not this be a trap?” | Furtively he
observed the jackal as well as he could in the dim
light, The jackal, perceiving this, proceeded to assure
him and reassure him, There were grave suspicions
against Perrott. Anything confirming them would be
welcome in high quarters. This cell was cold, dark,
and damp, this bread and water insipid and innutri-
tious. Let Sir Denis bethink him what it would be to
be a witness against Perrott in a State trial, and under
the protection of great people.
“He bit off my nose,” cried the priest. “ Man, look
at the state in which he has left me.”
109
110 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
“Yea, truly; he has disfigured thee for life. Thou
hast terrible wrongs to avenge. But I mean something
against his public credit and reputation, something
that would prove a disloyal mind to the Queen and the
Reformed religion.”
Light, not from heaven, began to dawn in the
priest’s mind.
“Hem, well, I will say that Sir John Perrott as
good as confessed to me that he was a Papist.”
“ How—what—where ?” cried the Jackal. “Be more
circumstantial, man.”
“ Marry, in this very building, and in his own private
chamber. I know enough to bring his head to the
block, an I were once free to tender my testimony
against the traitor, and write a book.”
Sir Denis’s memory and imagination were growing
momentarily more powerful. His eyes, turning inward,
searched a visionary past for useful matter, and found it.
“Sir John Perrott had me into his own room to say
Mass for him,” he went on; “and after I had said the
Mass for him he confessed himself to me, and I shrived
him.”
“Will you put that m a book?” quoth the
jackal.
“ Ay will I, and more than that.”
At this moment the lean figure of Byrd, with a quill
in his hand, rose vividly before the priest’s mind. |
“Why, now that I remember,” he went on, “there .
is a letter from Perrott to the King of Spain. Oh, a
most wicked and traitorous letter.”
“ But the terms, the terms?” yelped the jackal.
“ Nay, the terms I cannot rightly recall, but it was
a most wicked and naughty letter. I had it in my
hands and read it. Sir John Perrott gave it to me to
O ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY 111
be sent into Spain, for my dwelling is near Waterford,
and ships ply thence to the Groyne.”
“Thou hadst, then, good favour and countenance
from the Lord Deputy ?”
“Yea, I had that indeed. Have I not told you that
he did secretly bring me from this dungeon to his
private chamber to say Mass for him, and to shrive
him ?”
“ And thou with thy nose bitten off by his orders !”
“Yea, truly. A man of God bears not malice, and
there was no other priest in the Castle.”
“T see,’ replied the jackal dubiously. “But the
letter. Didst thou perchance make a copy of it ?”
“A copy, forsooth; nay, man, I know where the
letter is, and in safe hands too. Litera scripta manet.
Dost think I would send a letter of that heinousness
out of the realm? Nay, I am a loving and loyal
subject. Let me get free but for one sennight, and I
will have the letter.”
The thought of Byrd and his great skill as a scrivener
was now strong in the priest’s mind. All manner of
rich and rare possibilities were disclosing themselves.
“Sayst thou so?” cried the jackal. “ Bethink thee
well of all this; I shall be here anon.”
From that moment Sir Denis O’Rouane’s star of
fortune began to ascend. The same day he had for
‘supper, not bread and water, but chicken and bacon,
and a goodly stoup of ale. The jailer, heretofore so _
gruff and brutal, was polite, even respectful, and seemed
anxious to converse.
“Set down the mess, fellow, and take thyself away,”
cried the priest. We are rising in the world, and we
know it,
Next day he was removed to a more commodious
112 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
lodging, and generally cleaned up and brushed, and
made more presentable. Nourishing food and drink
were set before him three times a day, for how can the
mind be bold and inventive when the stomach clamours
to be filled? Finally, he came into a very high
presence indeed, and the Lord Deputy of Ireland
inclined his viceregal ear to the noseless one and his
artless tale, and for a while forgot his own corporal aches
and griefs. “The Spanish letter,” that was the thing.
The massing for Sir John Perrott, and the shriving of
him after he had confessed, were all very well in their
way, and must go into the priest’s “book,” but the litera
scripta, in Perrott’s own hand, with his autograph at
the foot, that was the jewel. By hook or by crook, and
though men should die for it, Fitzwilliam must get
that letter. Sir Denis could only recover that letter as
an escaped prisoner. To let the priest free, and not be
himself seen in the business, was the problem now for
Fitzwilliam. There were deep plottings and plannings
over this bad bit of a bad road, the plotters in deadly
earnest. Old Mr. Maplesdeane, a dependant of Fitz-
william, and captain of the prison service, was very
helpful at this point.
One morning there was a great hubbub in the Castle,
men protesting and Fitzwilliam storming. A prisoner
had escaped during the night—it was Sir Denis
O’Rouane. A scapegoat was necessary to save the
Viceroy’s or Mr. Maplesdeane’s credit, and a scapegoat
was found. One of the constable’s men was hanged
for that eruption of a State prisoner. The plotters were
in deadly earnest. When an Elizabethan man went for
an enemy he did not stick at trifles. :
A week or so later, upon information received, Fitz
william’s guard searched a certain house in Dublin,
O’ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY 113
and there discovered and’ arrested Sir Denis, who was
marched back to imprisonment, but seemed no way
cast down in consequence, so that men wondered at
his fortitude.
Not many minutes passed ere there was in Fitz-
william’s hands, and under his delighted eyes, a singu-
larly interesting letter in Perrott’s handwriting, and
subscribed with his name. Fitzwilliam, as soon as he
could for malign joy, wrote a letter to the Queen, along
with which he folded up Perrott’s. He wrote another
to Lord Burleigh, bade his son John prepare to sail at
once for Chester, and ride thence to London as fast as
he could go.
The letter to Burleigh was as follows—
“February 16, 1590. Dublin Castle—Sends by his
son John a letter to be delivered to the Queen. One Denis
O'Rouane brought it to me, together with his wife. It is
subscribed by Sir John Perrott, and addressed to the King
of Spain. Sir Denis O’'Rowane said Mass to Sir John
Perrott after he had confessed him. If your lordship did
hear what was confessed it would, the party saith, give
you more to do than marvel. Sir Denis is now writing
a book of informations ; it will take him some time, as
one of the constable’s men bit off a piece of his nose, and
he can work only at short fits. Encloses—
“Sur John Perrott to the King of Spain—Acknow-
ledges his letters to him when he was President of
Munster’ (some fifteen years before).
“Offers of King Philip will give him the whole land
of Wales for ever, then he, Perrott, will undertake to get
him the two lands of England and Ireland.
“SIR JOHN PERROTT.”
I
114 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
Before he reached London young Fitzwilliam was
passed with scant salutation or with none by a party of
Trish gentlemen, going at the top of their speed. The
youth wondered at their discourtesy. They had hawk-
boys with them, and hawks and led horses. Every-
where they hired the fleetest horses, and did not spare
them. Honest young Fitzwilliam, who did not know
much, thought such conduct unkind. When he learned
their names he ceased to wonder. They were gentlemen
of Perrott’s faction in the Pale. Such rascals could
be guilty of anything. But it was not through dis-
courtesy that they passed the Lord Deputy’s son on
the road.
Rogues like O’Rouane have always more strings than
one to their bow. While he was at large the thought
struck him—“ This move against a man so mighty as
Perrott may fail. Then shall I be ruined indeed; torn
first on the rack, and then hanged like a dog. Better
make myself a friend in that quarter too, and tell as
much as I dare, receiving a promise of ultimate protec-
tion, and in the meantime get cash in hand for my
secret.” So Perrott’s Irish friends learned that the
Fitzwillamites were formulating a charge against Per-
rott, with O’Rouane for chief witness. When young
Fitzwilliam started for London they knew the nature
of the despatches which he bore. They too started for
London. They would pre-occupy the Queen’s ear and
that of the Council, and let them know what manner
of man was O’Rouane. The hawks and led horses—
war-horses—were presents for the members of the
Council. No one then visited great people without a
gift in his hand. But the game now played was far
deeper than those simple-minded Irish gentlemen at all
O'ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY 115
suspected. They saw not beyond it to the veiled figure
—crowned,
A little later the Council in Dublin received an
order from the Imperial Council to inquire into this
matter of the Spanish letter.
~The Council duly sat, presided over by Fitzwilliam.
They had no inkling how the wind blew in high
quarters, did not yet know that it blew dead against
Perrott. They thought that they were merely called
upon to quash, formally, certain monstrous and in-
credible charges. Duly the Irish Council reported
that O’Rouane’s story about the massing, confessing,
and shriving was the idle tale of a man devoid of all
credit and reputation; and that, as to the letter, it was
a forgery, the work of a certain convicted forger,
Master Henry Byrd, set on and instigated by the priest.
The Council then dissolved, and wended homewards
with their darned heels.
But they were soon enlightened. When the time
necessary for the going and return of the post to London
had elapsed, the councillors one by one were summoned
to Fitzwilliam’s private chamber in the Castle, where
the Lord Deputy read for each man’s behoof a very
sharp and pointed letter, the Queen’s autograph. We
see here how State trials were managed in those golden
days.
The Council was a second time convened—this time
to review those former judicial findings under which
Byrd was pilloried, and O’Rouane’s nose was bitten off.
Owing to the enlightenment recently received, they
found that the warrant under which the super-altare,
etc. had been carried off was genuine, was in fact Perrott’s,
and that O’Rouane and Byrd were foully injured men.
An Order in Council was made, in reparation of the
116 THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE
credit of both, was read with beat of drums, and posted
up on church doors through the city. |
Next there came an order from the Imperial Council,
transferring the whole of the proceedings to London,
and Master Worsely, a Queen’s messenger, came to
Dublin charged with the duty of conducting over all
the witnesses and accused persons. For of witnesses
and accused persons, and suspected persons, there were
now many. All Perrott’s trustiest and most trusted
Irish friends were arrested. In the meantime Fitz-
william had not been idle. It was now known that
Perrott was to fall, and crowds of obscure creatures
rushed forward to tender testimony. Sir Denis
O’Rouane was not now alone in the Castle. Margaret
Leonard was with him, and all the little O’Rouanes,
father, mother, and offspring, all well lodged, well
clothed, and well fed. They were all about to cross
the sea as witnesses against the man who so late
ruled all Ireland like a king. Sir Denis sat well-
pleased. in the midst of his family. Whoever fell he
was safe, for he had hedged. For the journey to
London, Fitzwilliam ordered him a new suit of the
most decent clerical’ raiment. Viewed from the rear,
by an unobservant eye, he looked quite respectable.
There was terror in the Pale, in the shires, and in the
territories, Beyond the Shannon Bingham trembled.
The President of Connaught was, indeed, no friend of
Perrott’s, but Fitzwilliam hated him, and sought his
downfall in the downfall of Perrott. Many men trembled.
Then the thunder died away, and those who survived
looked around on those who had fallen. In the sub-
sidence of the storm one thin, small, but very insistive
voice was heard, supplying that suggestion of the farcical
and absurd which was never quite absent throughout
O’ROUANE, THE JACKAL, AND THE LORD DEPUTY 117
the whole course of the tragedy. It was the voice of
Mr. Henry Byrd, scrivener, clamouring to be restored
to his perch in the High Commission Court; clamour-
ing to the Queen and the Lords of the Imperial Council
to do him right.
“My credit has been repaired,” cried Byrd; “ that
sentence against me for forgery has been wiped from
the book of the Council Chamber; yet they will
not give me back my place in the High Commission
Court.”
But the State, having got all it desired out of Byrd,
now flung him aside. Byrd’s conviction for dishonest
practices as a clerk in that court was forwarded to
Lord Burleigh, and the creature sank again into his
native deep. Perrott’s fall came gradually, so that
neither he nor his friends had an opportunity of
executing a coup d'état. First, his fair fame was blown
upon, but at the same time it was given out that
though a compromising letter had come to light, there
was nothing in it. He was only directed to absent
himself from the meetings of the Council. 35.64.
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INFORMACON FOR PYLGRYMES: Reproduced in
facsimile by the Oxford University Press from the
unique copy preserved in the Advocates’ Library at
Edinburgh. Edited by E. GORDON DUFF. Sm. 4to.
Ios. 6d. met. (350 copies printed.)
*A prospectus of the Miscellanies will be sent on application,
18 MESSRS. LAWRENCE & BULA
MORIER, JAMES—-THE ADVENTURES OF
HAJJI BABA; OF ISPAHAN. “Editeg ays
C. J. Wiis, with an Introduction by Sir FrREpER-
IcK GoLpsMID, K.C.B. Illustrated from original
sketches made by the Author, and from Drawings
by Persian Artists. Royal 8vo. £1 1s. net.
The Publishers are indebted to Lady Morier, who kindly
placed at their disposal James Morier’s Sketch Books, con-
taining the interesting drawings that he made for the express
purpose of illustrating his famous romance, which remains
the one authoritative work on Persian manners and customs.
The Editor, Dr. Wills, during his residence in Teheran,
commissioned Persian artists to illustrate incidents of the
story ; and these drawings have been used for the present
volume, which also contains numerous reproductions of
Persian textiles, pottery, metal work, household implements,
&e.
MORRIS, WILLIAM.—THE WOOD BEYOND
THE WORLD: A _ Romance. Small 4to.
6s. net.
‘We question whether the Artist of the Beautiful
has ever created anything more beautiful than ‘‘ The Wood
beyond the World.’ Asa story, the book is utterly de-
lightful: there is no other word for it.”—St. fames's Gazette.
MUNCHAUSEN.— THE SURPRISING AD-
VENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN;
Copiously illustrated by Wittiam StTRANG and
J. B. Crarn, , Demy Sv; 75.02,
‘‘The power and grotesquerie of the drawings are of
the first order.’’—Saturday Review.